A dark and foggy morn

Also froggy!

It was a little difficult, setting up for Market after a month's absence--my last weekend was called on account of smoke. All those little actions that are usually muscle memory take conscious thought, slowing me down. Especially at set-up, where conscious thought is in short supply. Cats woke me up at 3:30 am and I couldn't get back to sleep, so I had a long day. It was also a month darker than September, and the fog was so thick on Delta Highway that I almost missed my exit, coming in.

Slow morning, then abruptly busy. Lots of students, all of them wearing masks (properly, no less), though not distancing in any way. Big clumps of kids going by, though only one or two coming into the booth at a time, so that was at least tolerable.

Sales very brisk; remember, a month back, me saying I'd had the best Saturday Market in 27 years? Well, I surpassed that one by 2 pm. Denise also did well, $80 in paper, cards and journals for the day.

Next week would have been Clay Fest, in a kinder year. In a more responsible 2020, it would at least have been our Club Mud Outdoor Sale. Both have been cancelled, so now it's just a Saturday I'm not at Market for. I feel strangely unstuck in time; just realized that I need to contact my galleries, see if anyone is selling well enough to need restock. The one in Olympia has been open and doing shows, posting regularly to Instagram, but I don't know how well their back stock is selling. The Forest Grove gallery usually has an Artist's Event around the Christmas sales season; presumably they'll have some version happening that will need stock. I really need to get back into production mode, when I'd rather just sleep.

Maybe I'll wait until after Wednesday. It's my birthday, and we're planning an escape, a day trip down to the coast. Pack a picnic lunch, get takeout fish and chips for supper, and just be away.

Instafamous

I just passed 100 followers on Instagram! I feel vaguely famous. Many of them are potter friends, but more and more are people who follow my potter friends, or customers who followed me there via Market. I wish I hadn't bought a zillion business cards last winter; it seems like I should reprint them with my Insta-handle. Maybe I'll get a rubber stamp.

If you use that platform, you might want to check it out too. I tend to post more pics there than here, because it's just so much easier to shoot, crop and upload. I don't have to worry about resizing, to avoid blowing my quota here on Dreamwidth.

My handle there is @off_center_ceramics. Remember the underscores. I'm also using #offcenterceramicseugene on all my posts, so that's another way to find me.

Inklings

Needing some distraction from, oh, everything, I decided it would be fun to do another drawing challenge for October. I even had the perfect little book I'd made, with pages from a rescued drawing paper pad.

If only I could find it.

Turned the desk upside down, looked through all the boxes of book projects, and finally faced the fact, Wednesday night, that if I was gonna do drawings this month, I'd have to use a different book. The only blank book I could find had thin pages and an uninspiring cover.

So I made a new one.

It's got heavy drawing paper pages, a gelli-printed cover in fall colors, with leaf prints. Perfect for an October drawing challenge.

Except it isn't Inktober anymore. The originator of the word went and trademarked it, and then his lawyers--possibly without his permission--started issuing cease-and-desist orders to people trying to sell cards and art that had "Inktober" in the branding.

Sigh.

So this year, I'm calling it Oc2ber--my second year, right? And I think I'm gonna retag last year's drawings Inklings, along with the new ones, so they're all easy to find.

Here's a look at the book. Drawings soon.